[time-nuts] Need a Watch Recommendation

[Dana Whitlow]

I concur with Bill.  And even if one keeps tabs on the current watch error,
as is the usual practice by celestial navigators, once that error reaches
or exceeds more than a minute the process frankly gets more clumsy and
error prone.  And if a watch drifts in time very rapidly, one loses faith
in its
ability to coast at a known rate between checks against WWV, which
opportunities are not always available when one wants, due to
propagation issues.

Whatever happened to the quartz watches with trimmer capacitors
for setting the rate?

And radio controlled?  No way!
The process is to delicate and marginal to rely upon.  Give me a
good stable free-running watch any day.

I don't like the solar watch concept mainly because one sometimes
has to go for weeks without an opportunity to expose his watch to
direct sunlight (or some indoor equivalent) for the requisite period
of several hours.

Yesterday I was reading the manual for the Citizen ECO series,
and that thing requires far too much effort and complication to keep
it working and on time.  A good watch must simply work, with no
maintenance beyond occasional battery replacements (and possible
gland replacement at battery-change time), and accurately enough
that the time need never be reset between battery replacements.

I use an old quartz diving watch I bought just under 10 years ago,
(brand no longer distinguishable), which has never drifted more than
about 30 sec (usually less) between battery replacements, and I never
take it off between batteries except when compelled to do so at TSA
checkpoints.  Aside from its LCD's failing I'd be happy to use if forever,
but it's getting awfully hard to read these days.

Dana



On Wed, Mar 14, 2018 at 10:54 PM, Bill Byrom <time at radio.sent.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 14, 2018, at 6:53 PM, Dr. David Kirkby wrote:
> > What is the most demanding task one would use a wrist watch for?
>
> It depends on your job or hobby.
>
> During the Apollo 13 rocket burn before their emergency re-entry, Jack
> Swigert used a wrist watch to time the retrorocket burn which was
> manually controlled by Jim Lovell. Their normal capsule chronometer was
> inoperative. This was mostly a differential (time interval) timing
> measurement.
> If you needed to determine your location (longitude) and all you had
> was a wristwatch and a sextant (and software or a table with certain
> information), the accuracy of the distance calculation would depend on
> the absolute time accuracy of the watch. At the equator the longitude
> error due to time error is (40,075.16 km/day) / (86,400 sec/day) =
> 463.8 m/sec.
> Amateur astronomers need to know time accurate to about a second or
> better for accurate osculation observations.
> Amateur Radio nets and phone, Skype for Business, or WebEx conference
> calls usually start pretty close to the scheduled time. In some cases
> people start wondering if the organizer is delayed after about 15 to
> 30 seconds.--
> Bill Byrom N5BB
>
>
>
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